Randolph Isham Routh


Sir Randolph Isham Routh was a British Army officer reaching the rank of commissary-general. He was senior commissariat officer at the battle of Waterloo.

Biography

Routh was born at Poole, Dorset, the third son of Richard Routh, Chief Justice of Newfoundland, and his wife, Abigail Eppes. He was educated at Eton College and was destined to study at the University of Cambridge, but on the sudden death of his father instead entered the commissariat department of the army in November 1805, being stationed first in Jamaica.
Routh was engaged in the Walcheren expedition in 1809. He served afterwards through the Peninsular war; became deputy commissary-general on 9 March 1812, and was senior commissariat officer at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. After the peace he was on the Mediterranean station, and from 1822 in the West Indies, spending some time in Jamaica. On 15 August 1826 he was made commissary-general, and was at once sent to Canada, where he did good service in the rising of 1837–8; he was a member of the executive council, and was knighted for his general services in March 1841. He returned to England on half-pay in February 1843.
, painted by his second wife, Marie Louise Taschereau
From November 1845 to October 1848 Routh was employed in Ireland in superintending the distribution of relief during the Great Famine. For this service he was created K.C.B. on 29 April 1848. He died in London, at 19 Dorset Square, on 29 November 1858.

Works

Routh was the author of Observations on the Commissariat Field Service and Home Defences, a handbook for commissariat officers. It was quoted as an authority by Alexander William Kinglake in his Invasion of the Crimea.

Family

Routh married, first, on 26 December 1815, in Paris, Adèle Joséphine Laminière, daughter of one of Napoleon Bonaparte's civil officers; secondly, in 1830, at Quebec, Marie Louise, daughter of Judge Henri Elzéar Taschereau and sister of Cardinal Elzéar-Alexandre Taschereau. Edward John Routh was his son by his second wife.